One of the highlights of the pro-war rally sponsored by the Yale College Students for Democracy yesterday was the speech of star faculty member David Gelernter. We don’t have a link to Professor Gelernter’s speech, but we have obtained the text. Here it is…a Power Line special. “Among supporters of the war in Iraq I doubt there’s a single one who’s ‘pro-war.’ No one wants war, no one likes war; »

Everyone knows that Reuters is a left-wing organization that shows consistent bias against both the United States and Israel. Less well known is the AFP news service, which has been in business since the early 19th century and is headquartered in Paris. AFP is one of the sources used by Yahoo News, which is how I mainly run into it. The following news item is reproduced in its entirety, including »

James Taranto’s Best of the Web includes this link to Tiger Woods’ official website, where Tiger has these comments on the war: “I have great respect for the men and women fighting overseas to protect our way of life in Iraq and other parts of the world. As the son of an Army officer, I understand the strength, courage and discipline required to successfully carry out their missions in hostile »

The National Consulting Committee on Human Rights has released a report on racial violence in France, which says that there were 313 acts of racial violence last year, compared to 71 in 2001. Of these, almost two-thirds–193–were directed against Jews. The report also says that there were 47 attacks on North African immigrants, of which 25 “were attributed to the extreme right.” No word on who’s attacking the Jews. »

The New York Times reports that in Basra, Saddam loyalists are seizing children and threatening to execute them to force their fathers to fight. The column of tanks and other vehicles that came out of Basra yesterday was apparently manned by such reluctant warriors; not surprisingly, it was quickly destroyed. On the radio this morning I heard some commentary by liberals who berated the Administration for allegedly being “surprised” by »

In addition to Mac Owens’ analysis of the events transpiring in Iraq, check out Jed Babbin’s running updates on National Review Online, the most recent of which is the excellent “Fair kill chain.” Babbin clearly has good sources in the Defense Department. And be sure to scroll down to his first update this morning, “Saddam’s victory,” in which he describes Saddam Hussein’s survival strategy as conforming precisely to the Arafat »

Mac Owens brings some needed perspective to the debate about the progress of the war in this piece from National Review Online. As Owens notes, there is no evidence that any high-ranking administration official predicted a cakewalk, but plenty of evidence that the reporters now second-guessing the administration inferred — illegitimately — such an outcome. »

The New York Post cover story this morning runs with a stunning photograph of a sickening mural at the abandoned Iraqi military headquarters in Nasiriyah: “Airborne gets drop on Saddam.” The mural pays tribute to the 9/11 attack on America. UPDATE by Hindrocket: Here’s the photo. And just to help us connect the dots among the operative forces, the Palestinians have called on Saddam Hussein to strike Israel with chemical »

Trunk, thanks for posting Hugh Hewitt’s fine article. As Hewitt says, leftists have the right to make irresponsible, dangerous, and unethical statements about the war. The rest of us have the right, and even the duty, to point out the likely consequences of these statements. »

The New York Post has a couple of fine columns this morning. Ralph Peters details the heroics now being performed by the 7th Cavalry’s 3rd Squadron: “Knife fight.” Consider in this context John Podhoretz’s “Antiwar obscenities.” Podhoretz’s piece properly goes together with Hugh Hewitt’s Weekly Standard column “Commentary and consequences.” »

The Washington Times reports that yesterday, irregular forces from a group of “martyrdom volunteers” called the al-Quds brigade launched waves of attacks against the Army’s V Corps outside Baghdad. The result: hundreds of “martyrdom volunteers” killed, no Americans. This recalls a post of some months ago in which one of us remarked that suicide tactics can be effective against buses and pizza parlors, but are useless against actual soldiers, who »

The New York Times solicited an op-ed column from Conservative Member of Parliament and (UK) Spectator editor Boris Johnson. Johnson’s column was published in the Times on March 16 as “Bush’s war, Blair’s gamble” (the link is to an abstract of the column). Johnson found the highy refined editorial process to which the Times subjected his column somewhat bizarre, and recounted his experience in a piece for the Spectator: “Well, »

George Will pays tribute to Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his column this morning: “A beautiful mind.” Will notes that Moynihan “wrote more books than some of his colleagues read and became something that, like Atlantis, is rumored to have once existed but has not recently been seen — the Democratic Party’s mind.” »